Steyer-Taylor Center Executive Director Dan Reicher is profiled in Dartmouth’s alumni magazine.

Reicher—the go-to energy expert who has advised Presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama—can’t get the light to work. The fixture is flickering above the dining room table in his Piedmont, California, home. “A career in energy,” he says with a smile, “and I can’t figure out this light.”

It’s a career that began on a dreary Hanover morning in April 1979. Reicher, then a senior biology major, stood in President John Kemeny’s Parkhurst Hall parking spot. President Jimmy Carter had just named Kemeny chairman of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Reicher desperately wanted to work for the commission that would investigate the partial nuclear meltdown. “President Kemeny drove this little blue Fiat,” says Reicher, “and had a cigarette hanging from his lips.” When Kemeny pulled up, Reicher asked for a job. “President Kemeny said he’d get back to me.”

…

He has risen to this level thanks to his innovative and comprehensive approach. “If we want to make progress on clean energy, we have to make progress on technology, policy and finance,” says Reicher, who earned his law degree from Stanford. “My whole approach has been to integrate these three key areas.”

…

His goal is to bring both cash and strategy to the science. “You can develop a great low-carbon technology,” Reicher explains, “but if you aren’t able to finance it or secure supportive policy, you won’t make progress. Solar cells have been around for 60 years but still provide only a tiny percentage of our energy today.” The technology behind fracking dates back to the 1940s, he adds, but only recently has it been utilized on a large scale to produce natural gas. “The technologies must work well at scale and also be cost competitive with current energy sources. This is very different from creating the next app.”

Read More